“Oniisan… ohitori desu ka?”
The sun bled out behind the mountains. I thought about the voicemail. “Your father’s been asking about you. The doctor says—” I hadn’t called back. I’d walked out of my apartment, left my phone on the kitchen table, and taken a train to the last stop, then a bus, then these steps. oniisan… ohitori desu ka?
I was twenty-two then, or maybe twenty-three. The kind of age where “alone” still sounded like a choice you made, not one that was made for you. I’d come up the mountain to escape a thesis I wasn’t writing, a city that buzzed like a trapped wasp in my chest, and a voicemail from my mother that I’d listened to four times and still not answered. “Oniisan… ohitori desu ka